Roselea

Category: Technical Info

  • Finished Lining Tech Cupboard with Fermacell

    We started the new week with a job of finishing lining the Tech Cupboard with our Fermacell boards. We wanted to get this little room all done so that we could start installing the batteries and the heavy-duty electric bus bars that will route the power from our batteries that will be located in this Tech Cupboard and get this 50Volts DC power running up and down our hallways, but most especially, to our Utility Room and over to the Plant Cupboard where we got our Solar Inverter box so we can charge our batteries using the power of the Sun.

    The metal leg (one of seven that holds up the Skylight and roof!) was completely encapsulated with a layer of 18mm OSB board and then covered in the 10mm thick fermacell material. The walls are also covered in 18mm OSB boards plus the fermacell, so we can now screw shelving brackets anywhere in our Tech Cupboard

    Finished Lining Tech Cupboard with Fermacell

    Tech-cupboard-lined-and-filled

    We then filled in all the little staple holes and also rounded all the corners with Polyfilla, rubbed it all down and then gave the whole room a good thick coat of white paint.

    Finished Lining Tech Cupboard with Fermacell

    Tech-cupboard-Painted-1

    Finished Lining Tech Cupboard with Fermacell

    Tech-cupboard-Painted-2


    That is that done and we can now start creating battery storage cabinets, equipment shelves and installing high powered electricity bus bars and network patch panels etc.

  • Rain Tank Capacity

    The Rain Tank!

    Dimensions

    5m (16feet 3inches) long
    3m (9feet 9inches) wide
    1.2m (4feet) deep

    Capacity:

    Hole dug out = 18 cubic metres (635 cubic feet) about 38tons of sand and soil
    Water inside is 95% of hole size = 17.1 cubic metres – due to the plastic construction of the crates
    Overflow starts 50mm below top surface of tank so will never fill to maximum therefore subtract 0.72 cubic metres.
    Plus the pump cannot reach right to the very bottom of the tank as the plastic crates has structural flanges which will contains a certain amount of water. The highest flanges are 50mm high so therefore that is another 0.72 cubic metres of unuseable water!
    Total Storage for rain water is 15.66 cubic metres
    That is 15,660 litres
    or
    3,445 gallons (UK measurements – its 4,137 US Gallons)
    Or
    27,558 pints !

    Now that is a big water butt!

    Construction

    There are 90 crates each measuring 1000mm by 500mm by 400mm (well actually it is 390mm high – the manufacturer states that each crate is 200litres capacity but in reality it is only 195litres!) made of a polyproperlene materials. We layered 15 crates on each layer and rotated them around to provide maximum loading spreading. There are 4 layers altogether. Then a thick geotextile (measured as 250gsm) is put on first to soften the edges of the crates (we also sanded the edges and especially the corners). The rubber membrane is the next layer (the rubber is a man-made material with long life stability, we decided to buy the 0.75mm thick grade. You could have 0.5 or 1mm thicknesses) and finally on the outer most an another layer of thinner but tougher geotextile (about 150gsm) to keep the sand and soil from wearing or puncturing the rubber!

    So far we have 200mm of water in the tank and it is still there after a week! phew!

    Applications

    We can use it to flush our toilets, wash the car, have showers, provide automatic watering for the garden and even use it for the washing! We of course will have the normal Mains Water taps in the kitchen etc. for drinking.